QUESTION: What was the human cost of the Trump administration’s delay in instituting measures to curb community spread of the coronavirus?

ANSWER: Thousands of times more deaths than necessary.


Dr Fauci recently (12 Apr) acknowledged that an earlier response could have saved lives:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/donald-trump-anthony-fauci-tweet/index.html

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci, said on "State of the Union" when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," added Fauci, who is a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."

Note: Dr Fauci today (13 Apr) explained his response to Tapper as being a true answer to a hypothetical question, but that clarification in no way negates his statement.


So just what was the human life cost of delaying the social distancing measures (which have unequivocally proven to be effective in “flattening the curve")?

Infection data from February are not very reliable due to sporadic, insufficient and inaccurate testing. But by early March testing/reporting was significantly improved, and the quality and quantity of data was much better. There is no reason to believe that the virus was spreading differently in February compared to March.

As expected of pandemics, the spread of the virus has followed an exponential growth rate prior to the implementation of mitigation measures. The graph below shows the actual number of cases (symbols) of coronavirus infection over the first 21 days of March (source: www.worldometers.info). The data follows an exponential growth (straight line on a log plot) with a doubling time of 2.385 days (the line).

For simplicity, a doubling time of 2.5 days means the number of cases would multiply as follows:

0 day pick any starting number of cases
2.5 days 2X
5 days 4X
7.5 days 8X
10 days 16X
15 days 64X
20 days 256 X
.
.
.
30 days 4096 X

Going back to the best-fit doubling rate of 2.385 days, a two (2) week delay means nearly 60 times the number of cases; in 3 weeks the number of cases increased by nearly 450 times.

You can do the math yourself to validate the result:

3 Mar 124 cases
24 Mar 55,222 cases

55,222 / 124 = 445 X

Shortly after 24 March the curve of number of cases has been starting to flatten or deviate from the exponential growth. This means that the doubling time has increased (lengthened) as a result of the social distancing measures.

Trump’s restrictions on flights from China implemented on 31 Jan probably had a positive impact in reducing the number of cases early on. However, Trump only acknowledged the severity of the threat in mid-March when he declared a national emergency, and social distancing measures were only recommended days later. That means effectively 6 weeks of squandered time!!!

Today the number of infected people stands at over 586,000. So much for “only 15 cases and they are all getting better.”

There is absolutely no doubt that earlier implementation of mitigation measures by the Trump administration would have saved lives. Trump’s inaction throughout the month of February and early March has resulted in THOUSANDS OF TIMES more infections than necessary.

Someone should be held accountable. With any luck the voters will speak up in November.

QUESTION: What was the human cost of the Trump administration’s delay in instituting measures to curb community spread of the coronavirus?

ANSWER: Thousands of times more deaths than necessary.


Dr Fauci recently (12 Apr) acknowledged that an earlier response could have saved lives:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/donald-trump-anthony-fauci-tweet/index.html

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci, said on "State of the Union" when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," added Fauci, who is a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."

Note: Dr Fauci today (13 Apr) explained his response to Tapper as being a true answer to a hypothetical question, but that clarification in no way negates his statement.


So just what was the human life cost of delaying the social distancing measures (which have unequivocally proven to be effective in “flattening the curve")?

Infection data from February are not very reliable due to sporadic, insufficient and inaccurate testing. But by early March testing/reporting was significantly improved, and the quality and quantity of data was much better. There is no reason to believe that the virus was spreading differently in February compared to March.

As expected of pandemics, the spread of the virus has followed an exponential growth rate prior to the implementation of mitigation measures. The graph below shows the actual number of cases (symbols) of coronavirus infection over the first 21 days of March (source: www.worldometers.info). The data follows an exponential growth (straight line on a log plot) with a doubling time of 2.385 days (the line).

For simplicity, a doubling time of 2.5 days means the number of cases would multiply as follows:

0 day pick any starting number of cases
2.5 days 2X
5 days 4X
7.5 days 8X
10 days 16X
15 days 64X
20 days 256 X
.
.
.
30 days 4096 X

Going back to the best-fit doubling rate of 2.385 days, a two (2) week delay means nearly 60 times the number of cases; in 3 weeks the number of cases increased by nearly 450 times.

You can do the math yourself to validate the result:

3 Mar 124 cases
24 Mar 55,222 cases

55,222 / 124 = 445 X

Shortly after 24 March the curve of number of cases has been starting to flatten or deviate from the exponential growth. This means that the doubling time has increased (lengthened) as a result of the social distancing measures.

Trump’s restrictions on flights from China implemented on 31 Jan probably had a positive impact in reducing the number of cases early on. However, Trump only acknowledged the severity of the threat in mid-March when he declared a national emergency, and social distancing measures were only recommended days later. That means effectively 6 weeks of squandered time!!!

Today the number of infected people stands at over 586,000. So much for “only 15 cases and they are all getting better.”

There is absolutely no doubt that earlier implementation of mitigation measures by the Trump administration would have saved lives. Trump’s inaction throughout the month of February and early March has resulted in THOUSANDS OF TIMES more infections than necessary.

Someone should be held accountable. With any luck the voters will speak up in November.

Completely false to employ a hindsight fallacy. At the time you are professing Trump SHOULD have acted, a) China and the WHO were still spreading false info, b) NO nation had information on which to act, c) no national leader outside of South Korea saw reason to take big action (and SOKO just has a LOT of experience dealing with Chinese outbreak).

Additionally, c) when Trump halted Chinese inflow he was vilified as racist, xenophobic, etc. d) the same with Europe bans, e) the same with closing the southern border, and f) the same with the northern order. g) Deblasio was out suggesting the Trump actions were unwarranted well after the ban, and h) Pelosi was parading about Chinatown attempting to ridicule Trump for his previous actions.

Can a case be made that some specialist somewhere could have pushed harder, sooner? Sure. Is it possible that Trump was no less aware than say Spain or Italy? Nope. Considering the left tried to STOP the President, can anyone argue the left had it correct 8 weeks back. Not at ALL.

Rewriting the narrative now is nothing short of outright lies. The string of actual blame runs 1) Lying China, 2) Lying WHO, with number 3, your choice, at no more than .0000001% the liability of the first 2. Trying to suggest otherwise is just TDS manifesting, and believing such abject idiocy is evidence of terminal TDS.

Not false at all to use hindsight. It is the way to become informed of what is/was going on so that similar runaway scenarios can be prevented in the future.

First, the point of the post was to show how quickly exponential growth can make a bad situation worse. During that phase of the pandemic spread the starting number does not matter. What does matter is the time for doubling of the infection. This coronavirus doubled every 2.385 days; maybe the next one will be a week; or maybe a day.

Second, we don't have to discuss what Trump did or did not know in January or even early February. The multiplication factors are the same. So if there were 10 people early on, a few days later there would be 20. Who cares, right? No need to get excited. But a few weeks later the count is 4000, and that might be bothersome. But in just 2.5 days that will be 8000 cases. Holy crappo!!!!

Luckily the US seems to be past the rapid exponential growth phase and the doubling time has increased. As I write this the case count is over 600,000. Thank goodness for social distancing; otherwise before the end of the week the count would be well over 1,000,000. Just remember the number of deaths lags by a few weeks, so that number will continue to rise quickly for a few more days at least.

I still believe that, in hindsight, things could have been done better had Trump not been so dismissive of the situation several weeks ago. He cannot say he did not know about it and then claim that he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else and that he acted swiftly and effectively. The timelines just don't support that narrative.

At today's presser Trump walked back his absurd statement from yesterday that the president has absolute authority. It would be good to hear him say that his administration could have done better with the pandemic. It would be hard to tease such an admission of an error from his words, but you can be assured that the media would see it... and report on it at length. And... it would help humanize him.